Kitt (Federal Protection Agency #10)
Chapter 1
Jordy
Water ran out of the sink faucet in an uneven trickle. It shouldn’t have been a surprise. What could I expect from plumbing that probably hadn’t been replaced, or even repaired, in thirty years. Yet, I couldn’t help cursing under my breath as I fiddled with the faucet’s handles.
Today was important. Everything had to be perfect.
Giving up on the faucet, I turned my attention to the box of hair dye on the sink next to me.
The smiling model stared back at me, teeth too white, and hair a blinding bubblegum pink.
That color was obviously photoshopped. Even my hair, which was already a pale blond on its own, would never look that blindingly bright without some drastic bleaching beforehand.
That was fine. I didn’t want anything too extreme anyway. It was just time for a change.
My hair had been a cause for contention most of my life. Today, I wanted to finally look in the mirror and not cringe at what I saw.
Grabbing the box of dye, I ripped open the packaging with enough force to send the contents flying in all directions. Cursing again, I chased after the various packets, bottles, and papers before carefully lining them up on the bathroom counter so they couldn’t escape me again.
Then, after reading the directions through several times to make sure I knew what I was doing, I started mixing the dye.
The whole time, I kept my gaze pointed away from the bathroom mirror.
Blond hair, blues eyes, and fair skin. This was an ideal beauty standard that all people apparently strived for. I’d been told more than once how lucky I was to have such features naturally.
“Ha!” My laugh came out in one sharp, unpleasant sound, as I carefully poured the newly mixed dye into its applicator bottle.
If people wanted my looks, they were welcome to them. So far, my features had brought me nothing but trouble.
My blond hair and blue eyes were the exact reason I’d been taken by…
My thoughts came to a screeching halt and my hand dropped from where it had been reaching for the protective gloves that came with the hair dye kit.
Something deep inside me started to shake.
Setting everything aside, I braced my hands against the counter and closed my eyes.
Words from the several different therapists I’d worked with while living at the recovery center flashed through my mind.
I needed to center myself. Breathing deeply through my nose, and out through my mouth, I fell into a familiar meditation routine, and after a few minutes, the shaking stopped.
A year ago, this kind of episode would have sent me into a panic attack that lasted all day. Now, I was able to overcome it in just a few minutes. It was a sign of the progress I’d made.
Yet, I still couldn’t help feeling like a failure every time it happened. It was over. I was safe now. Everything should be fine.
“Bell ringers,” I said out loud. The name still sent a shiver up my spine, but I held it together.
It was one of the first things my therapists had focused on once I’d been brought to the recovery facility. Words had power, and I needed to be able to say the name of my abusers out loud. It allowed me to take the power back from them and reclaim it for myself.
Somehow, describing what the bell ringers had done to me, kidnapping me as a child to be used by a bunch of pedophile monsters, was easier to talk about. Though not pleasant to recall, it was clinical. An action that someone else did, rather than something that happened to me.
Saying their name out loud, however, had been nearly impossible at first. Giving my abusers a name felt like I was making them real and inviting them into the room with me.
“Bell ringers,” I said out loud again, just to prove that I could name them now. “Fuck you.”
With my hands no longer shaking, I reached once again for the bottle of hair dye.
I could do nothing about the color of my skin and eyes. I’d tried wearing colored contacts and fake skin bronzer once, but both had left me so irritated that I’d had to give up on them.
My hair, however, was easier to change.
After escaping the bell ringers, I’d just buzzed it all off. For years, I’d never let it grow longer than peach fuzz. Now, I’d finally gotten comfortable enough to let it grow out a few inches. It was still very short, but long enough for the natural pale color to be evident.
As I held the bottle of dye up to my hair, I decided that I wouldn’t cover all of it. My therapists insisted that I needed to learn to accept my looks. So, I would do them proud by letting some of the blond color remain, and I only applied the dye to the ends of my hair.
Once everything was applied, I had to wait twenty minutes for the dye to do its job. Until then, I was stuck in the bathroom.
So, careful not to let the dye on my hair touch anything, I hopped up onto the counter and started scrolling on my phone to pass the time.
This phone was another of my accomplishments. When I’d first arrived at the recovery center, I didn’t have more than five dollars to my name. Everything had to be provided for me, including a phone. It had been a low-tech flip-phone, mostly just for emergencies, that I’d barely ever used.
However, as part of my recovery, I’d gotten a part time job at a restaurant as a dishwasher. It wasn’t much, and honestly, I hated spending my days elbows deep in soapy water washing away the remnants of other people’s meals, but it gave me my own respectable income.
The very first thing I’d bought with my paychecks was my own phone.
Enjoying the fruits of my labors, I flipped idly through a few online articles as I waited for the dye on my hair to do its job.
It was mostly just clickbait titles, like “DEADLY OBSESSION: The Twisted Love Triangle that Led to a Brutal Murder” and “A Mother's Love Knows No Bounds: Watch This Dog Save Her Puppies from a Flood”. The topics varied so wildly that a person could get whiplash just from reading the titles. A few even looked interesting, but I knew better than to click on them. Most were just ads in disguise, and the few that held actual news weren’t worth wading through the proverbial muck to find.
I was just about to leave the page and go watch some funny cat videos instead, when the last article on the list caught my eye. The title wasn’t nearly as sensational sounding, but the unassuming words still brought goosebumps to me skin.
“The End of a Long Fight: Door Closing on The Bell Ringer Case.”
No way. I’d heard nothing about them since entering the recovery center.
What were the odds that news of them would show up on my most important day?
Maybe speaking their name out loud really had summoned them.
I roughly shook my head, then flinched when some of the dye from my hair went flying and landed on the wall.
Grabbing some paper towels, I cleaned off the wall as best I could, then turned back to my phone.
Should I click on it?
I could always just ignore it and pretend I didn’t see anything.
No, that would never work. Now that I knew the information existed, I’d never be able to rest until I saw it for myself.
Biting my bottom lip hard enough for my teeth to leave a dent in my skin, I clicked on the article.
Other than the title, the article had very few words.
All it really said was that there had been an unexpected disturbance in the case, followed by a link to a YouTube video.
Since I’d already gathered up the courage to open the article, I couldn’t turn back now.
So, without hesitating, I clicked on the video.
It was a clip from a news broadcast. The info sitting on the bottom of the screen under the reporter’s face said the footage was live, but based on the date of the article, I knew it had actually taken place a few days ago.
The reporter stood outside a courthouse, surrounded by a small crowd of other reporters all shoving their mics into the face of a man I didn’t recognize.
“Before this trial started, you said your client would be proven innocent without any doubt,” the reporter lucky enough to get closest to the man shouted over the noise of the crowd. “Now that the case has been put on hold, do you consider this a victory, or a setback?”
Despite all the chaos around him, the man looked completely unfazed.
Not a single strand of his overly oiled hair stood out of place, and his suit had been ironed to such a sharp perfection that he could probably use it in place of a letter opener.
He stared straight down the camera, completely confident over every word that came out of his mouth.
“Although this delay is not ideal, it’s just one more step toward our inevitable victory. It’s clear why the prosecution’s lawyer has dropped out of this trial. My client is innocent, and the opposing council knows it.”
A new microphone was shoved in his face and another reporter asked him a new question almost before he’d finished answering the first one.
“The prosecution is certainly going to take this break to try and gather more evidence against your client. Does this worry you or change your plans for the trial going forward?”
The microphone came close enough to the lawyer’s face that it almost bopped him in the nose. With a smile that was just a little stained around the edges, he pushed the microphone back to a more reasonable distance before answering.
“The prosecution has no solid evidence tying my client to these so-called, ‘Bell Ringers’ and now they are scrambling. But it doesn’t matter. No matter how long the case is delayed, they won’t find anything because there is no evidence to be found.”